Left to Me by Mackinley Clevinger, March 20, 2016
I’d like to pen a letter
To my brethren from before
From a land made not much better
And a future cracked to core
A tricky thing indeed
As I recall being told
To speak to those who came before
And not share too much of your lore
And stories of dead world
Of poisoned boiling dying seas
And lands of life that cannot breathe
But that’s what I’ve been born to
The life given to me
Never knowing what I’ve missed
Save stories of mystery
A land of love and strife and life
Alive in pain together in arms
A future so pretty to see
That’s not what was left to me
It’s hard to imagine standing here
That once nature grew so very near
To the lives you lived free of fear
Unchanging as day turned to year
But they say a day came
When all was taken away
There lived too many mouths to feed
In a world that would no longer bear seed
There were fights, there was war
As the world found itself turning poor
Once nature would to us provide
Then you found that it had died
The land was crap
The seas were crap
The air was crap
You wondered who would take the rap
You pushed too hard, you rose too high
As the world beneath you died
Too busy with future, with life ahead
You never thought what might lie dead
An errant eye, separate from the rest
Would put you all under a test
For it saw the end was nigh
Listen not, and pass them by
Burn the world to grease the gears
Watch the rise year from year
Get all you can while the getting is good
Think not for what lies misunderstood
Perhaps today you’re the top of the pack
But what’s the point, looking back
Who keeps score at the end of time
If you find that everyone died
Too late for me I’m sad to say
All of the world’s life gone in a day
Little for us to look forward to
A world of ghosts that just say ‘boo’
Even for you I’m not so sure
If the Earth can be once more pure
Give it a go, why not, why not
Don’t sign your name by a cursed dot
Your children do not have to die
The oceans height need not there lie
To starve and suffer so needlessly
Don’t suffer the same fate as me